As Chief Justice Roberts recently wrote, cell phones are “such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy.” But what do people really use their phones for? We asked a bunch of New Yorkers around town.

At the Draper University of Heroes, tech-world hopefuls are taught to think big, bold, and purposeful—to dream in order to walk. Only then will they be prepared for Silicon Valley’s more mundane reality.